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Weight Loss & Loose
Skin?
If you are overweight, or if you have been overweight in the past, then
you know that getting rid of the excess weight is only one of the
challenges you face.
Once the fat is gone, you are often faced with an equally frustrating
problem: Loose skin.
There are a few things you should know about loose skin after very large
weight losses:
1. Skin is incredibly elastic. Just look at what women go through
during pregnancy. Skin has the ability to expand and contract to a
remarkable degree.
2. Elasticity of skin tends to decrease with age. Wrinkling and
loss of elasticity is partly the consequence of aging (genetic factors)
and a result of environmental factors such as oxidative stress, excessive
sun exposure, and nutritional deficiency.
The
environmental parts you can fix, the genetics you cannot.
My advice: Be active and change the
things you have control over. Be realistic and do not worry about what you
cannot control.
3. The percentage of your skin that will return to its former
firmness depends partly on age. The older you get, the more (and extremely
large weight loss) can leave loose skin that will not return to
normal.
4. How long you carried the extra weight has a lot to do with how
much skin will become stretched tight after the weight loss. Just compare
a 9-month pregnancy with 9 years carrying 100 excess pounds.
5. How much weight was carried has a lot to do with how much
the skin will resume a tight appearance. Your skin can only be stretched
so much and be expected to “snap-back” one hundred percent.
6. How fast the weight was gained also has a lot to do with how
much the skin will resume a tight appearance.
7. How fast weight is lost also has a lot to do with how much the
skin will tighten up. Rapid weight loss does not allow the skin time to
slowly resume to normal. (yet another reason to lose fat slowly: 1-2 lbs
per week).
8. There are many creams advertised as having the ability to
restore the tightness of your skin. None work – at least not permanently
or measurably, and especially if you have a lot of loose skin.
Do not waste your money.
9. If you are considering surgical skin removal, consult a
physician for advice because this is not a minor operation.
Surgery should be left as the ABSOLUTE FINAL option.
10. Give your skin time. Your skin will be tighter as your
body fat gets lower. Sometimes the skin gradually tightens up, at least
partially, after a one or two-year period where the weight loss was
maintained and exercise continued.
11. Loose skin is one thing, but having
body fat is another. Do not mix both. Be honest with yourself
and do that by taking your body fat measurement. This can be done with
skin fold callipers or a variety of devices as callipers might not be the
best method if you have large folds of loose skin. Unless you are really,
really lean, it’s difficult to get a clear picture of what is loose skin,
what is just body fat, and how much further the skin will tighten up when
the rest of the fat is lost.
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Fat |
Fat & Skin |
Loose skin |
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The key to getting tighter skin is to lose
more body fat, up to the point where your body composition rating is
BETTER than average (in the “good” to “great” category, not just “okay”).
Only AFTER you reach your long-term body fat percentage goal should you
give thought to “excess skin removal”. At that necessary point, admittedly,
there are bound to be a few isolated cases, like mine, where surgery is
necessary if you cannot live with the amount of loose skin remaining.
Before that, just keep hitting the gym.
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